Scientists find evidence of nicotine habit in the hair of mummified bodies of people living in the San Pedro de Atacama from 100 B.C. to 1450 A.D.
A new finding from the DNA testing on the hair of mummies from the town of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile reveals that the people living in the region smoked tobacco from 100 B.C. to 1450 A.D. The new study challenges the long-believed idea that the people living in this region smoked tobacco for a short period of time before moving on to snuffing hallucinogens in snuffing trays from 400 A.D.. Hermann Niemeyer, organic chemist in the University of Chile and lead of the study, says that the nicotine habit prevailed among the people of that time, irrespective of their wealth and social status.
Niemeyer and his team of researchers took samples of hair of 56 mummies from the Late Formative to the Late Intermediate periods. Through DNA testing on these hair samples, researchers were able to find traces of nicotine in the hair of 35 mummies, which also revealed the use of tobacco through full range of years.
Niemeyer noted that the bodies of the mummies were well-preserved from high temperatures and the extreme dryness in the soil salinity of the Atacama Desert. Researchers found a variety of objects including jewelry, weapons, ceramic objects, raw metals, textiles, vases and various snuffing paraphernalia, including mortars, trays and tubes along with the mummies. Researchers used these objects to determine the social and wealth status of the mummies that were either buried in the ground of entombed in "some sort of stony environment made for them."
The smoking habit and snuffing hallucinogens was deeply ingrained in the culture of many pre-Hispanic societies. "The proposal one most often reads is that [the hallucinogens] were used mainly by shamans," Niemeyer told LiveScience. The shamans or the witch healers used plants, which were the source of hallucinogenic compounds, as a means to connect to God and spirits and also used them as ingredients for treatment of diseases.
However, researchers were not able to find traces of tryptamine alkaloids in the hair samples as the body destroys these compounds before they make it to the hair follicles, Niemeyer added.
The findings will be published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
